The Heart is a Lonely Hunter: Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

Mick wakes up early, eats breakfast, and waits on the porch for John Singer to come down from his room with the paper like he does every Sunday morning. When Singer doesn’t come downstairs, Mick asks her father where he is, and Mr. Kelly tells her that Singer came home late the night before—with company. Mick fetches her baby brother Ralph from the kitchen and waits for her second brother, George—whom everyone calls Bubber—to return from Sunday School. Once Bubber is back, Mick, Bubber, and Ralph, in a little red wagon, go for a walk.

Mick leads Bubber and Ralph to the construction site of their family’s new boarding house. She leaves Ralph with Bubber while she climbs up to the roof and spreads her arms wide. Mick wants to sing, but can’t choose a song out of the many coursing through her. Mick sits down on the roof’s peak and smokes a cigarette. She daydreams about being “seventeen […] and very famous.” She begins humming one of the piano pieces that is almost always playing in the back of her mind. When the baby begins crying, Mick reluctantly climbs down from the roof, wishing she could have a little more time to herself. 

Mick tells Bubber to comfort Ralph, then goes by herself into the empty, half-finished house. Though the Kelly family has recently put up several “Keep Out” signs to keep gangs of kids from playing in the house at night, the walls are covered in graffiti. Mick pulls some chalk from her pocket, writes some dirty words on the wall, and signs her initials. Mick hums a tune by a musician whose name she can’t remember at first. As she continues humming the tune, the man’s name comes back to her, and she writes “MOTSART” on the wall.

Mick hears Ralph crying again. She goes outside to find him sitting in his wagon alone—Bubber is nowhere to be seen. Mick feeds Ralph a jelly bean from her pocket to calm him down and whistles for Bubber. Together, the three of them begin walking home. Mick talks aloud to her brothers, describing the strange dreams she’s been having lately and telling them about how badly she wants a piano of her own.

Back at the house, Mick puts Ralph in her parents’ room and gives him a toy to play with. She goes into the room she shares with her older sisters, Hazel and Etta. Etta is primping, and Hazel is lying on the bed. The girls stop talking as Mick enters the room. Mick doesn’t particularly like her sisters—she thinks Etta, with her dreams of making it big in Hollywood, is vain and dull, while she feels Hazel, as the eldest girl, is lazy and spoiled. Etta teases Mick for her tomboyish outfit. Mick defiantly says she’d rather be a boy than look like either of her sisters. She fetches a hatbox from under her bed and runs up to her older brother Bill’s room.

In the gangly and awkward Bill’s room, Mick sets the hatbox down. She opens it as Bill works at his typewriter. Mick pulls out a cracked ukulele that she’s been trying to transform into a violin by adding parts from different instruments. As she examines it, she becomes full of sadness and self-loathing—she realizes that the ukulele will never be a violin. Crying, Mick drops the ukulele back into the box, kicks it away, and runs downstairs. It is time for lunch, but Mick’s mother tells her that because there are so many visitors at the boarding house today, she and her brothers will have to eat in the kitchen.

In the kitchen, Mick and Bubber listen as Portia, a black woman who works as a servant in the boarding house, talks reverently about her Grandpapa’s farm several miles from town. When Portia mentions that her grandfather has an organ and a gramophone, Mick perks up—she asks why Portia doesn’t live there. Portia answers that while many members of her family do live on the farm, times are hard and she needs to work and save money. Mick asks if Portia’s parents live on the farm, and Portia answers that her father is a doctor in town. Her father, she says, is a man who’s “hard to explain”—studious and strict, he has a “wild” temper and has isolated himself from the rest of the family.

Portia begins talking about how her father has abandoned religion, and Mick remarks that she doesn’t believe in God “any more than [she does] Santa Claus”—she loves messing with Portia. Portia rises to the bait and states that Mick won’t know love or peace if she doesn’t find religion. Portia, her husband Highboy, and her brother Willie all have peace—as do Bubber and John Singer. Bored by the conversation, Mick leaves the kitchen and wanders up and down the hall, wishing she had a house of her own and a real piano to go in it. Mick is upset that Portia implied she’s never known love—in reality, Mick has been in love with “one person after another,” though she’s never let anyone know.

Mick sits on the stairs outside the room of one of the boarders, hoping to hear the sound of a radio. Instead, Mick is flustered and excited when John Singer comes out of his room and goes across the hall to the bathroom. Mick privately wonders “what kind of music he hear[s] in his mind” and what he might say to her if he could talk. Singer comes out of the bathroom and returns to his room, giving Mick a small smile and a nod on his way. Mick wishes she could follow Singer into his room but knows it would be impolite to intrude on his solitude. Mick sits on the stairs and thinks about how odd it is that she’s so lonely in such a busy, crowded house.